Jump to content

FrogPrincesse

society donor
  • Posts

    4,741
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by FrogPrincesse

  1. @TicTac Bummer. At least now it's very viscous and, more importantly, it tastes great! It will continue to set in the jar, so maybe in a week or two it will be fully set. And now that you have found a new source of interesting citrus, you know what you have to do next - make more marmalade!
  2. Hi @mlbatt, great to see you here! You will find that eGullet is a friendly and knowledgeable group, and you will fit right in! Welcome!
  3. @JohnT That sounds wonderful. I do various types of citrus as well (mostly bitter oranges, kumquat, yuzu). It's fun to mix them and experiment based on what is available. Other than bitter oranges or kumquats which are delightful on their own, I have found that citrus mixes are more interesting than single citrus - one of my favorite combinations is yuzu, Cara Cara orange, and Meyer lemon.
  4. @JohnT Beet or cane, it’s sucrose. The source of sugar doesn’t make a difference with respect to reaching the gelling point. What are your favorite citrus combinations to use?
  5. @TicTac Some batches take a few days to fully set once in the jar. It’s thicker already which is a great sign. Fingers crossed!
  6. Yes, I am the bubble whisperer. I also cook rice by sound, believe it or not. It's correct about the foam. It will foam quite a bit, and then much less as you get closer to the end. Marmalade is a commitment for sure and I am glad you haven't given up. You cannot always predict how long it's going to take, but once you are in, you have to keep going. It's going to be so worth it at the end, trust me!
  7. Nice. For sure you need to cook it more, you are probably half way there. As you get closer, the liquid will darken a bit, the bubbles will sort of thicken / get smaller and make a different sound. That's when you know you are almost there and should reduce the temperature so you can achieve the exact consistency that you prefer (you are just fine-tuning at that point). Most recipes don't describe this stage very well, although it is probably the most critical. Your grandpa probably learned from watching someone else do it, and learn to do this "by feel". Once you know what it is supposed to look like (and do it regularly so you don't forget), it's pretty straightforward. You will eventually be able to tell it's ready just by listening to your pot.
  8. @TicTacAdditional comments - the amounts of water, oranges, sugar seem about right. I use the overnight procedure and leave the seed bag in until the end, but none of that is critical in my view as the oranges have a lot of pectin to begin with. Adding lemon or lime to the mix won't make a difference for reaching the gelling point as oranges are already acidic enough on their own. I am confident you will get there if you boil it at a high enough temperature.
  9. @TicTac I recommend increasing the temperature to a fairly energetic boil. A low simmer won't get you there and 25 minutes is nothing given the quantity of fruit that you are dealing with.
  10. Here (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) are the bags I use. They are $6 for 2 and they last for a very long time as they are made from a nylon mesh. They also work great for cheese, nut milks (orgeat...), if you are into this kind of thing.
  11. And to answer your earlier question, mine takes about 45 minutes to set, but that is with the right pot etc. When I made my first batches, it often took 2-3 hours to get there. So just persevere, you will get there eventually. I never had a citrus marmalade not set properly, as they contains quite a bit of pectin. With other fruit, that is a different story of course.
  12. How much fruit & sugar did you put in there? And did you do this in 2 steps (first, boil the peels in water with the seed bag, rest overnight, and boil with sugar on day 2)? Doing the 2 steps helps extract additional pectin which helps the jam set. How are you testing it? (using a small metal spoon in the freezer works well) How energetically is it boiling? I find that you need a fairly robust boil (avoiding scorching of course) so enough water evaporates. Constantly mixing helps. Do you know the current temperature? What type of pot are you using? Something wide will get you there much faster. Feel free to post a picture or video if you can, seeing the bubbles is another indication for how close you are to the gelling point.
  13. @TicTac I am glad you were able to find Seville oranges! As Katie said, use the juice in the marmalade. They tend to not have a lot, but that depends on the variety and freshness. I also use the juice of a sweet orange (following David Lebovitz's recipe). It's there for flavor, and so is the liquor component (scotch is traditional, rum also works quite well), if you choose to include it. The beauty of making marmalade is that you can make it exactly to your liking! Cheesecloth is absolutely fine, actually that's what I used in my first batches. It can shed at the edges, so you just have to keep an eye on that (make a tight bundle and you will be fine). Also, if it is the fabric type, it is not reusable and you will need another piece for the next batch. Because I make marmalade regularly, I upgraded to a cheese / nut bag - I just wash it at the end and it is good to go for another round of marmalade or jam. As to what goes into the bag, unlike Katie, I include seeds and pith as they are both great sources of pectin. Initially I was worried that including the pith would make the marmalade less clear, but that is not the case at all. A mix of white and dark brown sugar works very well. I have done it in the past either intentionally (for another boost of flavor, caramel notes) or unintentionally because I realized at the last minute that I didn't have enough white sugar on hand. Again, another opportunity to create the flavor profile you like the best.
  14. No such thing as too much lemon in my opinion, but could you link the recipe?
  15. It looks like a typical marmalade, just cooked longer so it caramelizes.
  16. @Fernwood No they aren’t delicate. They easily keep for a few weeks in the fridge, so transporting them shouldn’t be a problem.
  17. That's the one I have. Love it!
  18. Using the right pot will get you there faster and without overcooking the fruit. With a tall and narrow pot filled pretty full, it was easily taking 2 hours to reach the gelling point. With a large and wide pot, about 30-45 minutes. The bag in the right in the picture has the seeds (and membranes) which provide additional pectin (in addition to the fruit itself) and help the marmalade set.
  19. Thanks for the additional details, @Kerala. That looks really good indeed! And thanks for reminding me about your foodblog, I will make sure to (re)read it!
  20. Correct (and fixed)! 1.5 kg of sugar, as I am not a big fan of Seville soup... You are lucky to have learned from your grandfather! There is no tradition of making marmalade in my (French) family, so I learned through trial and error and with the tips from other eGulleters. For me the biggest improvement was to use the right pot! When I used a tall/narrow pot in my first attempts, getting the marmalade to set would take forever (several hours). Now it's a much faster process, thankfully.
  21. Beautiful and mouth-watering food, everyone! Thanks for sharing your family tradition, @Kerala (and the gorgeous landscape). It sounds like you had a real feast and the ballotine looks very fancy - what did you use for the farce/stuffing? We celebrated on Christmas day and it was just the four of us. We started with some snacks: iberico bellota salami (first time trying this and I highly recommend it), cured duck prosciutto, and little florettes of tête de moine cheese. Also a few medjool dates stuffed with Gruyère (my daughter’s contribution). I was in the mood for something rustic to start the meal, and decided to go with a Corrèze garlic soup from Paula Wolfert's Cooking of Southwest France. It is made from slow-cooking garlic and onions in duck fat and stock (I used goose for both). The soup is thickened at the end with egg (sort of a French version of egg-drop soup), and livened up with a touch of red wine vinegar. It is served with a slice of rustic bread (bought at my local bakery Wildwood Flour) brushed with a touch of goose fat & sprinkled with ground pepper. I followed with a simple endive, Fuyu persimmon and nut salad (recipe from Zuni, I used walnuts instead of pecans). It was good, although a bit plain to be honest. The recipe calls for cutting the endive into thin spears, but this goes against the French custom of never cutting salad greens in your plate (it is considered impolite, and for example you are supposed to gently fold large leaves of lettuce rather than cutting them), so I just sliced them into less pretty but more manageable bite-sized pieces. 😄 The persimmons were very good; it's been a fantastic year for persimmons in California. Following the simple salad was a roast goose prepared in the Alsatian style, following Anne Willan's recipe from Country Cooking of France. I first cooked goose for the holidays a few years ago, and now my husband requests it every year. The goose is stuffed with green apples (that I realized post-meal I had forgotten to serve...) and basted with brown beer (Mammoth nut brown in this case). I served it with potatoes (cooked in the pressure cooker and then roasted underneath the goose in the goose fat) and red cabbage braised in brown beer & vinegar with caraway seeds (recipe from Tom Colicchio in Think Like a Chef). The red cabbage provided some acidity to cut the rich flavor of the goose (the green apples serve the same purpose - that is, if you don't forget to serve them 😁). The goose is first browned in the oven at high temperature, then the skin is pricked and the bird cooked upside down at lower temperature to release the fat, then cooked some more breast side up. Finally, it is massaged with butter and crisped at high temperature for a short time before resting and carving. Goose is quite rich in fat of course, and it sort of self-bastes with the fat slowly releasing and permeating the meat, so the legs in the end taste essentially like confit (very similar to duck confit, just larger) and are the best part in my opinion. My meat thermometer was, it turned out, defective so the breasts ended up a bit overdone but still very edible. I have since then treated myself to a new Thermapen! For dessert, I decided to try a local, family-owned French pastry shop for a traditional bûche de Noël. It was pretty good I thought, and the decorations were cute. More importantly, my daughter absolutely loved it! 😊
  22. Has anyone been making marmalade lately? Here is my annual batch of marmalade. I used a dozen Seville oranges (951 g, they were on the smaller size this year), mandarin juice (1/2 glass), 2.4 L of water, and 1.5 kg of sugar. I follow the recipe from David Lebovitz in Ready for Dessert with minor modifications - I scrape the skin to remove all the membranes that I place in the seed bag (I find that if I leave the membranes in, the marmalade isn't as clear). I used 2 tablespoons of aged rhum agricole as the booze component. The marmalade gelled pretty quickly and the set is quite firm. It tastes very bright and a bit acidic but will mellow as it ages. The yield was 8 jars (6 x 8 oz jars and 2 x 13 oz "Bonne Maman" jars).
  23. I have both types and prefer the skinny one- it’s easier to navigate around a round surface like a lemon or an orange. The paddle-shaped one is good for cheese.
  24. FrogPrincesse

    Dinner 2023

    I realized am a bit behind in posting meals. This one is from December 30 - someone was in the mood for scallops and I found super fresh specimens at Catalina Offshore, my local seafood shop. I prepared them scampi-style and they tasted amazing, very sweet. December 29, I was in the mood for a cheese soufflé and made this one from Jacques Pepin using Swiss gruyere. The recipe is "easy" and doesn't require to separate eggs. It was delicious (especially the crusty bits on the sides and bottom), but quite rich!. I ate it with a green salad (plenty of vinegar) on the side.
×
×
  • Create New...